Proceedings of National Conference on Recent Advances in Electronics and Communication Engineering

(RACE-2014), 28-29 March 2014

1

A Review of Diversity Techniques in Wireless
Communication system
Satyanand Choudhary
1
, Surbhi Jha
2
, Prabhakar Sharma
3
1,2
B.Tech Student, I.T.S Engineering College, Greater Noida
3
Assistant Professor, I.T.S Engineering College, Greater Noida
1
Satyanand.chaudhary@gmail.com
2
surbhi3jha@gmail.com
3
prabhakar.sh@gmail.com

AbstractIt is the technique used to compensate for fading channel impairments. It is implemented by using two or more
receiving antennas. While Equalization is used to counter the effects of ISI, Diversity is usually employed to reduce the
depth and duration of the fades experienced by a receiver in a flat fading channel. These techniques can be employed at
both base station and mobile receivers. Spatial Diversity is the most widely used diversity technique. In this technique
multiple antennas are strategically spaced and connected to common receiving system. While one antenna sees a signal
null, one of the other antennas may see a signal peak, and the receiver is able to select the antenna with the best signal at
any time. The CDMA systems use Rake receivers which provide improvement through time diversity.
Keywords: Equalizers, diversity, ISI ( Inter-Symbol Interference), Fading.

I. INTRODUCTION
Diversity [2] is a technique, which is used to diminish the channel fading & is often implemented by using two or
more receiving antennas. In 3G transmit diversity is used where base-stations may transmit replicas of the signal on
spatially alienated antennas or frequencies. With an equalizer, diversity improves the quality of a wireless
communication link without alerting the common air interface & devoid of increasing the transmitted power or
bandwidth. The difference in equalization & diversity is that equalizer technique [4] is used to reduce ISI, whereas
diversity technique is used to diminish the effect of fading on wireless communication.
Diversity exploits the random nature of radio propagation by finding independent signal paths for communication.
Diversity technique is mainly applied on the receiver, & unknown to the transmitter. By this technique the strongest
or the best signal is received at the receiver. According to the types of fading i.e. small & large scale, diversity
techniques may be classified as:
(1). Small- scale fading: Small scale fades are characterized by deep & rapid amplitude fluctuations which arise as
the mobile moves just few wavelengths. These fades are caused by multiple reflections from the surrounding object.
To alleviate this, microscopic diversity technique, space diversity or antenna diversity techniques may be used.
(2). Large-scale fading: Large scale fading [5] is caused by shadowing due to variations in the terrain profile &
surrounding also. It occurs at large distance from the base-station. To alleviate this, macroscopic diversity may be
used.
II. CLASSIFICATION OF DIVERSITY TECHNIQUES
According to way the fading of the incoming signal is mitigate in wireless communication diversity techniques are
classification as:
Proceedings of National Conference on Recent Advances in Electronics and Communication Engineering
(RACE-2014), 28-29 March 2014


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Space Diversity or Antenna diversity: It is one of the most popular diversity technique used in wireless
systems. The direct path between the transmitter (BS) & receiver (MS) is not guaranteed & the possibility
of a number of scatters in the mobile environment suggests a Rayleigh fading signal (small-scale fading).
Multiple signals from spatially separated antenna (BS) is received on the mobile, the best signal is picked
by the mobile using the diversity technique as shown in Figure 1.. It is also used in the base station (BS)
design. At each cell site, multiple BS receiving antennas are used to provide diversity reception as shown in
Figure 1. The Space or Antenna diversity [6] can be categorize as:


Figure 1: Multipath Signal Environment and Selection of strongest signal
(1) Selection Diversity: This is simplest diversity technique where demodulators are used to give diversity
branches whose gains are adjusted to provide the same average SNR for each branch. The receiver branch
having the highest instantaneous SNR is connected to the demodulator. In practice the branch with the
largest (S+N)/N is used, as it is difficult to measure SNR alone. Figure 1 shown the block diagram of
selection diversity in communication systems.

Diversity
Techniques
Space or
Antenna
Diversity
Selection
Diversity
Feedback
Diversity
Maximal
Ratio
Combining
Equal Gain
Diversity
Macroscopic
Diversity
Polarisation
Diversity
Frequency
Diversity
Time
Diversity
Proceedings of National Conference on Recent Advances in Electronics and Communication Engineering
(RACE-2014), 28-29 March 2014


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Figure 1. Shown the block diagram of selection diversity in communication systems.
(2). Feedback or Scanning Diversity: This
technique is very similar to selection
diversity except that instead of always using
the best n signals, the n signals are
scanned in a fixed sequence until one s found
above a predetermined threshold value. Now,
this signal is then continuously received until
it falls below threshold value & if falls, the
scanning process is again initiated. The block
diagram of feedback or scanning diversity is
shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Block Diagram Of Feedback/Scanning Diversity
(3). Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC): In this method, the signal from the all branches are weighted according
to their voltage to noise power ratios & then summed (unlike selection diversity, where individual receiver
is used). MRC [1] produces an output SNR equal to the sum of the individual SNR.
This technique has a merit of producing an output with an acceptable SNR even when none of the
individual signals are themselves good enough. It is used in modern DSP techniques & digital receivers.
Here the individual signals must be co-phased before summation.
Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC): On the receive antenna, the received signal is,
where
is the received symbol on the receive antenna,
is the channel on the receive antenna,
is the transmitted symbol and
is the noise on receive antenna.
.
Proceedings of National Conference on Recent Advances in Electronics and Communication Engineering
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(4). Equal Gain Diversity: In certain cases, it is impossible to provide variable weighting capability like MRC.
In such cases, the branch weights are set to unity, but the signals from each branch are co-phased to provide
equal gain combining diversity.
This allows the receiver to
exploit signals that are
simultaneously received on each
branch. This is superior than
selection diversity but inferior
than MRC technique. The block
diagram of the Equal Gain
Diversity is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Block diagram of the Equal Gain
Diversity
Macroscopic Diversity: Macroscopic diversity [3] is a technique that can facilitate high quality and
ubiquitous communications between low-power portable radiotelephones and data terminals, and radio
base stations (ports) that are connected to the local network. It uses radio signals from several base stations
to alleviate the effect of shadow fading, a variation of signal strength over space created by the presence of
buildings, foliage, and terrain variations. With a path loss exponent of four and a shadow fading standard
deviation of 10 dB, four-branch macroscopic diversity results in a 13 dB improvement in signal strength
and a 15 dB improvement in signal to co-channel interference ratio for high user capacity interference-
limited operation. (Both figures are for 99 percent statistical coverage of the service area.) The
improvement in signal to co-phased channel interference ratio is equivalent to a factor-of-five savings of
spectrum.

Polarization diversity: It relies on the de-correlation of the two receive ports to achieve diversity gain. The
two receiver ports must remain cross-polarized. Effective Diversity is obtained with a Correlation
Coefficient below 0.7. In order to keep the correlation at this level -space diversity at a base station requires
antenna spacing of up to 20 wavelengths for the broadside case, and even more for the inline case.
Polarization diversity [6] at a base station does not require antenna spacing. At the base station, space
diversity is considerably less practical than at the mobile because the narrow angle of incident fields
requires large antenna spacing. The comparatively high cost of using space diversity at the base station
prompts the consideration of using orthogonal polarization. Polarization diversity provides two diversity
branches and allows the antenna elements to be considered
Frequency diversity: The signal is transmitted using several frequency channels or spread over a broad
spectrum that is exaggerated by frequency-selective fading [4]. Middle-late 20th century microwave radio
relay lines often used numerous regular wideband radio channels, and one protection channel for automatic
use by any faded channel. Later examples include: (1). OFDM (orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing) modulation in combination with subcarrier interleaving and forward error correction and (2).
Spread spectrum, for example frequency hopping or DS-CDMA.
Proceedings of National Conference on Recent Advances in Electronics and Communication Engineering
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Time diversity: Multiple versions of the same signal are transmitted at different time instants. Time
Diversity repeatedly transmits information at time spacing that exceeds the coherence time of the channel.
A modern implementation of time diversity involves the use of RAKE receiver for spread spectrum
CDMA, where multipath channel provides redundancy in the transmitted message. Multiple repetitions of
the signal will be received with multiple fading conditions, thereby providing for diversity.

III. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

Diversity is a powerful communication technique that provides wireless link improvements at relatively low cost.
Diversity exploits the random nature of radio propagation by finding the best version of multiple independent
incoming signals at the receiver. In diversity technique the multiple independent paths signal are highly
uncorrelated. If one radio path undergoes a deep fade another independent path may have a strong signal. Two
criteria are necessary to obtain a high degree of improvement from a diversity from a diversity system are (1). First,
the fading in individual branches should have low cross-correlated and (2). Second, the mean power available from
each branch should be almost equal.

IV. COMPARISON

Comparison of different diversity techniques is shown in Table 4.

Table 4 comparison between diversity methods, Source [6]

V.CONCLUSION
Diversity improves reliability of a message signal by using two or more communication channel with different
characteristics. Diversity plays vital role in combating fading and co-channel interference and avoiding error bursts.
It is based on the fact that individual channels experience different levels of fading and interference. Multiple
versions of the same signal may be transmitted and/or received and combined in the receiver. Alternatively, a
redundant forward error correction code may be added and different parts of the message transmitted over different
Proceedings of National Conference on Recent Advances in Electronics and Communication Engineering
(RACE-2014), 28-29 March 2014


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channels. Diversity techniques may exploit the multipath propagation, resulting in a diversity gain, often measured
in decibels.
VI. REFERENCES
[1] J. G. Proakis, Digital Communications. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.
[2] A. J. Goldsmith and P. P. Varaiya, Capacity of fading channels with channel side information, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 43, pp.
19861992, Nov. 1997.
[3] G. Foschini and M. Gans, On limits of wireless communications in a fading environment when using multiple antennas, Wireless Pers.
Commun., pp. 311335, 1998.
[4] Prabhakar Sharma & Shilpa Sharma,book of nandani publication, 1
st
Edition, ISBN 978-93-81126-42-4.
[5] T.S. Rappaport, Wireless Communication-Principle and Practice, Prentice Hall, 2nd Edition, 2002,
[6] Webb, William. Introduction to Wireless Local Loop. Boston: Artech House, 1998.